Nuclear 'Asteroids' Due In A Few Hundred Years

easyCoder writes "In this space.com article, it mentions a RORSAT satellite that has been leaking radioactive coolant, leaving little droplets of it in orbit around our planet. However, further down, it also mentions this, quoted here for maximum impact: 'After a RORSATs tour-of-duty was over, the reactor's fuel core was shot high above Earth into a "disposal orbit." Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the Earth's atmosphere.' Wow. So ... our great-grandchildren can expect a lovely day, partly cloudy with the occasional nuclear reactor plummeting down from outer space."

Comments

A Few Hundred Years?

[ravenspear]

What happened to 2012?

They'll be able to deal with it....

[dew-genen-ny]

....in a couple of hundred years, I'd be most depressed if they can't deal with a small nuclear reactor falling back to earth.

I mean we're meant to be progressing in our knowledge and abilities, no?

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[Anonymous Coward]

....in a couple of hundred years, I'd be most depressed if they can't deal with a small nuclear reactor falling back to earth.

Yeah and we'll all have flying cars!

I mean we're meant to be progressing in our knowledge and abilities, no?

Yes but not to a timetable. We'll probably have different sorts of entertainment systems but just assuming that we'll be able to deal with whatever problems we've chosen to put off today is... wilful blindness is the most polite description I could think of to finish that sentence.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[RallyNick]

Not only that they're likely to be able to handle them without huge costs, but the most dangerous radioactive components will probably be gone by that time. So you'll have a bunch of somewhat harmless spent uranium burning in the atmosphare and spreading over a wide area.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[Intocabile]

I'd be more worried about us even remembering this will happen.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[basingwerk]

You must have meant to say -
The environmentalist groups do everything in their power to see that we don't die out.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[WuphonsReach]

Unless it happens within a short time-frame (e.g. less then 6 months) where we suddenly go from 100% production to 0% production (which is highly unlikely), there should be plenty of reaction time to make the adjustment. You'll have at least a few years where the cost of raw oil slowly rises, probably with periodic price shocks. Perhaps as long as a decade or two.

During the adjustment time, as oil gets more expensive, it will become more cost-efficient to use oil to make alternative energy sources rather then directly burning oil. This, of course, will drive down the manufacturing/deployment costs of alternative energy sources (mass production instead of one-ofs). Which will re-inforce the cycle and make oil-based energy even less cost-effective.

So yes, there will be a period of adjustment, but barring global catastrophes, it won't be the end of the world as we know it.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[gfxguy]

I'm sure he meant what he said, and I agree - most large environmental groups are now political tools.

Like this story...

Or how about the guy that did more environmental damage burning all those SUVs then they would have caused in 20 years of operation?

Or how about that recycling can cause more pollution than not?

I'm not saying environmentalism is bad, I practice due dilligence myself, but these large "green" groups have become political tools that often simply act contrary to the establishment.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[mwood]

Indeed.

There are people who are environmentalists because they're sincerely concerned about our descendants having a nice place to live and they see a way to do something about that.

There are people who are environmentalists because they were going to be scared to death about *something* and environmental damage is as good as anything else.

There are people who are environmentalists because they hate big business and this is a way to hurt big businesses.

There are people who are environmentalists because they're confused by technology and want a weapon to keep it away.

There are people who are environmentalists because some other political party is vulnerable to environmental scandals.

There are apparently even people who are environmentalists because they despise their own species and see a good way to make us all suffer.

I have a great deal of respect for the first group. As for the rest, the best I can say is that I find *some* of them pitiable rather than contemptible.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[calambrac]

This is a nice statement. Thank you for your insight, for linking us to an editorial that doesn't even pretend to accurately represent the claims of the opposition, as well as for citing the actions of an extremist as though they were universally sanctioned by those bastard greens, and also for making some silly little statement about recycling.

Environmentalists are a broadbased, multipartisan, highly disjoint group of people who only share the belief that the environment has intrinsic value and should not be treated as a corporate liability. It's idiotic to claim the actions of any individual or individual group are representative of the ideology as a whole. Remember when the recent virus attacks were pinned on the Linux community? Didn't feel too good, did it?

Anyways, about environmentalists being tools: Who exactly am I being tooled by when I support dropping oil subsidies in favor of renewable energy sources? Where are the puppeteers holding my strings when I say I'd rather have a greenspace than a crappy stripmall that's going to fail in five years? And who's signing my check when I maintain that polluters ought to be responsible for the cost of cleaning (or even preventing) that pollution as a normal cost of their business? I'd rather not be called a tool by someone who quotes Fox News editorials, thanks.

Re:They'll be able to deal with it....

[Anonymous Coward]

Its so rare to find someone who has done so much research into the nature of environmentalists and what motivates them. Have you submitted your findings to any peer-reviewed journals?

Or do we find ourselves in the midst of some unsupported assertions?

Lets turn our focus now on the anti-environment people. Why do some people insist on ripping into the those who want to protect the environment? Is it greed? Is it over-sensitivity to criticism? Is it an unjustified blind faith in industry and corporations? Or perhaps its just the usual complacency which conveniently assures them to never sacrifice their precious standard of living?

Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

In a couple hundred years, they'll be able to clean it up before it causes problems. If not, then humanity probably isn't progressing much, and it won't be that great of a loss.

don't you mean meteors?

[goon america]

Asteroids != meteors. This is about them entering the Earth's atmosphere eventually, right? So, shouldn't we be expecting nuclear 'meteors'?

Simple-minded solution

[Jarnis]

The guy who decided this was a great idea was smart. By the time it comes down, he won't be around to take blame for his smart plan, and most likely his immediate children wont be either. It's Someone Else's Problem(tm)! Thinking further into the future would require too many brain cells and/or would demand convincing stupid beancounters that they should spend crapload of money to actually *fix* the issue instead of pushing it to future generations.

A view that is so common in our society today. It's *so* much fun to find yourself in crappy situations during your workday all the time, caused by the same mentality - "Out of sight, out of mind" and "Whew, got rid of the problem for now. Next time it's someone else's problem". Yeah, you can try spending time finding out who's to blame, but usually the idiot has covered his tracks well enough so that it's not worth the effort - easier just to permanently handle the situation (or, like lots of people enjoy to do - push it back so it becomes YET AGAIN someone else's problem)

Re:Simple-minded solution

[r5t8i6y3]

We do not inherit the world from our parents; we borrow it from our children
- American Indian Proverb

Whine, whine.

[momerath2003]

A little radiation won't kill anyone. Sheesh. The amount of radiation released by the NaK coolant drops (especially after being vaporized on hitting the atmosphere) will be negligible.

Once again, the media makes a big deal out of a little thing.

(Note that this doesn't excuse the Soviets' lack of foresight on the reactor. Then again, they did manage Chernobyl...)

Re:Grand children?

[Flingles]

This guy is going well, age wise if he can have great grand-children alive in several hundred years. I assume several hundred is at least 300, probably more. For 300- This means he must have a child in 75 years, who will have a grandchild in 75 years, who will then have the great granchild in 75 years, and now it is 225 years later, and this great grandchild will have to live 75 years just so he can get infected.

Not that I'm pedantic or anything

Re:A good example against nuclear powered *

[DAldredge]

Yea, because the only thing that comes out of the current Solid Rockets we use is rainbows and perfume...

More Asteroid Hemorrhoids

[Mulletproof]

"Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the Earth's atmosphere.' Wow. So ... our great-grandchildren can expect a lovely day, partly cloudy with the occasional nuclear reactor plummeting down from outer space.

Well here's a clue for the terminally short-sighted: Do you think maybe- just maybe -we'll have a better way to deal with it in several hundred years??? I mean for cryin' out loud, the damn things safe in parking orbit. It's not going anywhere for the next few centuries! Could the submitter be anymore of an alarmist if he tried? Heads up, Chicken Little, the sky is falling!

Sigh.

Maybe not that much of a problem....

[imsabbel]

I dont know that exact satelite, but most of those "reactors" are in fact thermoelectic, powered by decay death.
Those things use isotopes with a half life in a low 2 digit year range, because they NEED a HIGH decay rate to create heat. So in a few hundered years there wont be too much left to make our great - great children 3 eyed...

Re:Maybe not that much of a problem....

[DasBub]

For those satellites they used fully operational reactors, not just RTGs. A big bone of contention was that a lot of them were launched with an ACTIVE reactor. Prudence dictates that you should launch with a non-critical reactor, since an explosion during launch phase would have some bad effects. But early flight-rated reactors didn't have the capability to be launched cold and made critical in orbit - the precise adjustments just couldn't be handled remotely.

Really, though, their plan wasn't all that bad. When the satellite was taken offline, the reactor package would be boosted to a high orbit. In the 60's they would never have guessed that their space program (or the americans') would be so emaciated in the decades to come. They would certainly have expected some sort of orbital tug to be available in the 80s-90s.

And let's not forget how much worse things could have been... The Soviets very seriously considered leaving nuclear warheads permanently in orbit, rather than launching them all from the ground. When the time came, the orbiting warheads would be directed to re-enter en masse, which would severely reduce the available reaction time for the west. These systems were actually tested. A number of Kosmos satellites were dummy warheads that were launched, left in orbit for a time, and then directed to re-enter at a target zone. Imagine if a constellation of THESE had been left to decay over the past 4 decades.

Re:Maybe not that much of a problem....

[Fzz]

Imagine if a constellation of THESE had been left to decay over the past 4 decades.

Well that would certainly have provided some incentive to develop a workable space-tug technology by now wouldn't it? (assuming there was anyone left alive to do so)

Short sighted

[Dark Bard]

It's amazing how short sighted we've become as a species. So long as it doesn't happen in our lifetimes, who cares? Most species will die defending their children. We leave them to deal with our messes. They mention one small satelite. What about the space station? One day it won't be cost effective to maintain and it will come down. Of course it'll be dumped in the ocean where we dump the rest of our trash. Mercury levels in fish are already becoming dangerous. That's just one heavy metal. A problem that I've never heard mentioned is what do we do with all the skyscrapers? September 11th should have made it painfully clear implosion isn't an attractive solution. It'll be a few hundred years before most are ready to come down. What then? Like nuclear waste hopefully the next generation will figure out an answer. What do we care we'll all be dead. It'd be interesting to see what happened to attitudes if a means was devised to prolong life to 300 to 500 years. Suddenly all this crap becomes our problem again. If there's one thing more important than how to do a thing it's how to undo it.

Insignificant

[Detritus]

Even if all of the Soviet reactors reentered the atmosphere tomorrow, it would be insignificant compared to the many tons of radioactive material that was released into the atmosphere by above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.

Re:where to?

[Technician]

why not send it towards the great bright waste disposal unit in the centre of our system

Getting objects out of our lowly planet's gravity takes more energy than parking in a high orbit. Think going in orbit past the moon then keep going. It's a lot of fuel. On original launch date, they are usualy very concerned with weight. Minimual station keeping fuel is all that usualy remains. They at least had the forsight to take enough fuel to park it in a higher orbit. Most of our stuff doesn't carry the extra fuel. When it runs out of station keeping fuel, it's usualy de-orbited.

Re:A Bigger Problem: Critical Density.

[C10H14N2]

Paint chips?

All currently orbiting, or indeed travelling on interplanetary/interstellar (see: Voyager N) vehicles are shieled against naturally occuring micrometeors. An extra piece of junk thrown out by man is nothing compared to what is already out there --especially as concerns radiation. We could detonate every single nuclear weapon on the planet in relatively low orbit and barely register a blip compared to the naturally occuring radiation.

Seriously, the dinosaurs weren't wiped out by Sputnik. Yeah, there's a lot of man-made junk up there, but compared to what careens into the atmosphere from parts unknown every day, talk about a drop in the ocean.

Many of These Satellites

[i1984]

The linked article notes that "16 of a total of 31 RORSAT nuclear reactors orbited lost coolant following core ejection into disposal orbits."

The biggest short term problem seems to be the loss of NaK coolant, with the number of these drops "estimated to be 110,000 to over 115,000." Wih the possibility for more of them to leak if other space junk punctures the radiators of the satellites. In the most immediate future these droplets are mostly just navigation hazards, but the amount of radiation that might remain in them is unknown, and it's not known if they're further contaminated. I'm guessing the radioactive argon in the droplets, of which there is a presently unknown quantity, is a relatively small hazard...but please correct me if this suspicion is wrong.

I'm not sure how radioactive the reactors themselves might be; the article didn't give much information on this side of the problem. If anyone is familiar with Soviet spaceborne reactor design, please speak up! My strong suspicion is, however, that even in the likelihood they are thermoelectric reactors with short-lived isotopes, there would still be enough residual radiation to make them unpleasant devices to have land on you patio. And since there are so many of them, it seems a little too optimistic that they'll all land in the ocean.

Finally, I found it interesting that the article notes "we are on the threshold, if we have not already exceeded it, of reaching a critical density' of objects in low Earth orbit, where collisional fragmentation will cause the debris environment to slowly grow even if all other sources are eliminated." How will we respond if low Earth orbit becomes too dangerous for reliable operation of satellites or manned spaceflight? How dangerous is it right now, or does anyone know how many satellites are believed to have been lost due to space collisions?

Re:Many of These Satellites

[DasBub]

I'm not sure how radioactive the reactors themselves might be; the article didn't give much information on this side of the problem. If anyone is familiar with Soviet spaceborne reactor design, please speak up! My strong suspicion is, however, that even in the likelihood they are thermoelectric reactors with short-lived isotopes, there would still be enough residual radiation to make them unpleasant devices to have land on you patio."

As I mentioned a few posts above this one, they are not RTGs. They are honest-to-goodness reactors, with all the nasty daughter-products we've grown to love. It's just like a reactor on the ground: you go in pure, you come out perverted. The daughter products are much more of a worry than the remaining pure fuel. You can expect uranium and plutonium to stay in a certain state; preferably in large solid pieces. But the decay products will have much different chemical and structural makeup, more likely to pulverize or turn gaseous within our atmosphere.

At least with an RTG you can be assured that it'll come back in one piece 99.9% of the time. It's small, completely solid, no moving parts. They rely solely on passive cooling. But a reactor produces so much heat that it must use an active heat transfer system, meaning larger size and moving parts (pumps, compressors, lots and lots of thin heat-conducting pipes). Here we're dealing with a design that is inherently more breakable and failure-prone. It's kinda like the old saying "Why don't they just make the planes like they make the Black Box?" The RTG is small and compact, very very hard to break. The reactor's weakness is its size. You can only armour it so much before it becomes prohibitively heavy.

Today's Lesson: if you have to drop either an RTG or a reactor back to the earth's surface, CHOOSE THE RTG.

Re:I doubt it.

[Savage-Rabbit]

While the "credit card" approach to these things is nice, as in

"Well it really does not matter how much of a mess I make now, future generations will be glad to spend a mountain of money and huge amounts of effort on cleaning up after me"

it is really preferable to just design space craft in such a way that they create the minimum mess possible. And that does not just extend to Nuclear Reactors it applies to everything from slips of foil to entire decommissioned satilites floating around up there doing nothing other than endangering space craft. Ther e should be an obligation to build a disposal mechanism into every satilite launched.

List of nuclear accidents

[TildaBang]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_accid ents

These types of 'accidents' happen all of the time.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[Spyffe]

The spent fuel will burn up in the atmosphere, disintegrating into small particles. It will spread out and deliver a dose probably less than what you get in a doctor's office from an X-ray machine.

The posting of this article to Slashdot is FUD, pure and simple, as is most anti-nuclear propaganda. Radioactive material, like all other toxins, requires a certain concentration to be lethal. The danger is only to spacecraft, and that from collisions.

Re:why this is hooey

[debest]

Not only that, but it is a fallacy that the earth will ever "run out" of oil. What we will run out of is easily obtainable oil. Oil that requires refining out of oil sands deposits are going to be far more expensive to produce than a nice oil well, but is in far, FAR greater supply on this earth. Where oil will continue to be needed (where an alternate fuel or source is not practical), oil will always be there.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[Monoliath]

The spent fuel will burn up in the atmosphere, disintegrating into small particles. It will spread out and deliver a dose probably less than what you get in a doctor's office from an X-ray machine.

The posting of this article to Slashdot is FUD, pure and simple, as is most anti-nuclear propaganda. Radioactive material, like all other toxins, requires a certain concentration to be lethal. The danger is only to spacecraft, and that from collisions.

Ok, I can see all of the above as a very valid point, for not making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. On the other hand, the biggest changes, and also some of the most detrimental ones take place at a gradual rate. If things like this are being handled so sloppily now, what else is being irresponsibly handled? Where is the system of accountability in these kinds of situations? We?re shooting nuclear reactor fuel cores into orbit around are planet, not knowing when it will come back into the atmosphere, yeah it?s ?said? that it will take hundreds of years before it comes back, but the safety checks for the shuttle Columbia also said that everything was go and the shuttle was in tip top shape?

How much power are we going to give to ?research? and how vulnerable are we willing to make ourselves as a planet, to the ?hypothesis? of other individuals, who I?m sure some, have their own agenda, besides the benefit of mankind?? What happens if that reactor core falls back into the atmosphere, into a town and kills an entire city of people? Will the research community just say ?oops?, apologize and just call it a day? How much do we know about human-produced radioactive substance burning in our ozone, and it?s by-products and effects? Lots of questions, I know, but I have wonder about how out of control things are getting, right underneath our own noses?

Re:why this is hooey

[lee7guy]

Uhm, unless you are trying to tell us there is an infinite amount of oil hidden away, oil (in all forms) will run out sooner or later as long as we keep using it. It might take a while, but it will run out.

That is why oil isn't on the list of renewable energy sources.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[AKAImBatman]

If things like this are being handled so sloppily now, what else is being irresponsibly handled?

If it was nuclear and built by the Soviets, it was probably handled irresponsibly. NASA has *never* flown an automated reactor in orbit, and the deep space probes with RTGs (a passive power generation system that works by converting the heat generated by Plutonium into electricity) have nearly all had the RTG packaged in an indestructable black-box.

What's that? You were trying to blame the Americans for this? You didn't read the article? Oh. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever you see a greeny FUD piece, check to see if it's Timothy who moderated it. Chances are......

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[mwood]

Orbital mechanics is a bit more reliable than crossing our fingers and hoping that the shuttle never hits anything with its wings. Given a few radar fixes after the reactor core's acceleration quit, its fate is predictable to within quite reasonable limits. Or, more succinctly, we have a darned good notion of when this thing will come back to haunt us.

But it probably doesn't matter anyway, because we're going to have to pick up all of our junk sometime in the next hundred years if we want to make significant use of near space -- and there are plenty of people who do and who are arranging the wherewithal to use it. Time wasted on worrying that, "OMG, there's *RADIOACTIVE STUFF* in the universe!" would be better spent starting up the debate at the U.N. *now* over who is going to pay for the cleanup.

Already happened -- Cosmos 954

[Urban Garlic]

We can get some idea what the re-entry will be like from history -- in January of 1978, a Soviet spy satellite with a nuclear reactor on board (not an RTG, an actively-cooled fission core) re-entered out of control and landed in the Canadian arctic. My recollection is that in this case, the reactor core failed to eject, and remained partially protected within the satellite, meaning that the core was still relatively compact when it hit the ground. In this respect, the event was unlike an atmospheric bomb test, and hopefully, also unlike the re-entry of a properly-ejected reactor core.

There were no direct casualties from the crash, but only a small fraction of the power supply was recovered. One website I found says the Canadian government billed the Soviets for $6 million (Canadian, 1978) dollars.

Google on Cosmos 954 for more.

This is relatively insignificant

[haggar]

You may think this is a big deal, but just think about the Russian nuclear submarines that have been disposed in the oceans, during the last 30 years.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[lone_marauder]

Transit 5-BN-3 (1964), returned to Earth in 1965, Its RTG split open spilling 17 000 curies of plutonium 238 into the environment (all nuclear testing to that point had released only 9 000 curies of plutonium 238).

If I were to pour a cup of liquid methane on the ground, I would release more methane than every gasoline explosion in history. The reason, of course, is that gasoline is cataclysmically unlikely to decompose into methane in an explosive oxidation event, just as Pu-239 is unlikely to react to a supercritical fission event by poppping off a neutron and going on about its business.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[prisoner-of-enigma]

That's probably one of the most moronic things I've ever heard.

Since you're so quick to deem it moronic, perhaps you could enlighten us all by telling everyone what you would've done differently. After all, anyone can complain about a bad plan, but an intelligent person will complain and have a better plan ready to present.

Of course, whatever you elect to do must be practical (no "it should be launched into the Sun" or "the Shuttle should go up and retrieve it" plans) and cost-effective.

Now, given those limitations, please, tell everyone how much better your plan is, since I'm sure you have one. This isn't flamebait; I'm honestly challenging you to actually think about the problem instead of just criticizing it. Maybe you can come up with something that the best rocket scientists on the planet couldn't come up with.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew one of the astronauts that died in Columbia, and met 2 of the others. I take offense to your comment.

Manned missions to space has been and will always a dangerous job. But it's a job that they accepted and knew full well of the dangers, just like all the astronauts that came before them.

You are rocketing up and what is pretty much a controlled explosion. And then coming down through an atmosphere that can tear your craft apart, only to have one attempt to land with that manned rock.

NASA takes every precaution that it can to prevent a mishap, but accidents happen.

Yes! Don't use nuclear!

[ttfkam]

It's not like it's cleaner than coal in collection, energy production, or cleanup.

Take a Geiger Counter outside of a nuclear plant. Now take one outside of a coal plant. Hmmm... Much higher readings outside of the coal plant. What? Coal ore contains radioactive isotopes? Those isotopes don't burn up like the coal around them? Coal ash has concentrated radioactive material? The coal industry isn't as highly regulated as the nuclear industry?

Health problems? Do a google search for black lung disease. Hell, do some research on the total number of deaths from nuclear power generation and coal/natural gas since nuclear power was introduced. Nuclear engineers will normally receive more radiation from a single round of CAT scans than from their entire career at the nuclear plant.

Chernobyl? You mean the substandard plant where operators intentionally ignored warnings and pushed the envelope of safety much too far? The final death count was less than four hundred. Yes, the town of 75,000 had to be abandoned. This is an argument for not intentionally doing stupid things with your power plant.

The worst U.S. nuclear disaster? 3-Mile Island? Go back and check your history books. Look up the number of deaths. Zero. Look up the number of injured. None.

As it stands, U.S. nuclear power technology has fallen behind. Take a look at some of the French or, even better, German designs. I find it hard to believe that anything even approaches their level of safety or efficiency.

Terrorist attacks? Personally I'd be more worried about an exposed warehouse of natural gas where someone dropped a match. How about an oil refinery? Yeah, that'll be easy to clean up...

Nuclear waste? How about the euphemism (according to rabid environmental groups) "spent fuel"? Know why they call it a euphemism? Because all spent fuel in the U.S. is waste. Know why? Because in a bid to stop nuclear proliferation in the seventies, Jimmy Carter banned nuclear enrichment in power generation. No breeders for the U.S. Unfortunately for Carter, Europe gave him the finger and continued using nuclear -- including breeded reactors. Who listened? Japan. However Japan just sends its spent fuel to Europe for re-enrichment and buys it back for further processing.

What's the big deal. Let's take Diablo Canyon on the California coast. Only two turbines. 1/5 of the power production in the region. 20%!!! If anyone is curious, take a look at the number of >0.1MW powerplants in California. Diablo Canyon is on the coast about 2/3 of the way down from the top of the state. Look at all of those dams. Imagine all of the trucks, materials, and associated air/water pollution necessary for bringing the fuel to the plant.

Folks in California wouldn't even sell Diablo Canyon the water they needed even though the water/steam used to turn the turbines doesn't ever come into contact with the reactor; It isn't radioactive. So in addition to providing power, they had to set up a reverse osmosis water desalinization plant to get the water from the ocean. And it still gives 20% of the power for the region.

For all of the people whining about the number of birds killed by power poles and cell phone towers, I encourage you to take a look at the number of birds killed by power-generating windmills.

Solar? Anyone want to do the math on the number of panels necessary for even half of the national electricity usage? What about the power and materials required for their inital production?

Tidal? Will someone explain to me how land-locked regions would be able to take advantage of tidal power?

Fuel from soybeans? That would be a nice supplementary energy source. However, let's stop making food. Let's dedicate the nation's farmland to soybeans or other similar fuel generation crops. Reduce that number by the fuel necessary to s

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[term8or]

Maybe the solution should have been not to launch radioactive stuff into orbit in the first place? Practical AND cost-effective;)

Re:Spare me.

[ivan256]

Do you want to live next to a nuclear reactor -- ive got an offer, NO ONE HAS TO live next to a nuclear reactor if we get smart about our consumption -- and I mean quick. Western suburbanites need to wake the fuck up.

If you want to build a nuclear power plant right next door to me, I'd be all for it. Not only would I rather have a nuclear plant right next door than have a coal plant 100 miles away, why should I be expected to lower my standard of living, and why should other people be denied the opportunity of achieving whatever standard of living we're capable of providing just because you're afraid of some technology that you think you understand but don't.

I want to be able to heat my house without burning oil, wood, or coal (it doesn't have to be a 3000 square foot house either. I live in 800 square feet right now). I want to drive to work without burining gasoline (and I don't have an SUV), or be able to take a train without it burning diesel (to generate electricity no less!). I want the population of the planet to have all the luxuries I have without having to cull about 4 billion people for it to be sustainable. The only technology we're currently capable of that can provide these things is nuclear. If we're going to maintain our current sociatal situation, or if we're going to regress, then what's the point?

Oh, then there's this:

This can best be summed up by my saying I am ... Pro Reality.

Let me give you a healthy dose of reality. People don't like to change. Hell, people don't like other people to change. THere's tons of bullshit out there about preserving cultures to the point that we have cities full of old worthless buildings we can't knock down for historical reasons and people who try to revivie dead languages. People go to war over cultural differences, yet we even try to preserve the cultural differences that cause war. Changing the behavior of people enough to gain the "efficiency" and "responsiblilty" nescicary to stop burning carbon fuels *and* not have nuclear power is not just as close as you can get to impossible without going over, it's also far more dangerous to our society than the worst nuclear power accident we're capable of.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[chainsaw1]

So, you're basically saying that if it was orbiting around something _else_, (Sun, Galactic Center) that would be ok.

How is that not "out of sight, out of mind", as you previously said you were against?

Still, that's a rather deceptive comparison

[Solandri]

Claiming that an RTG released more P-238 than all previous nuclear explosions, when the manufacturing process for a nuclear bomb involves getting rid of as much P-238 as possible before it's ever exploded. (P-239 is fissible, P-238 is not and a lot of work goes into getting rid of it to produce a viable bomb.) The layman would read that as "the RTG released more plutonium than all previous nuclear explosions," which is probably the point - to mislead the reader into thinking the danger from an RTG is like the danger from a nuclear bomb.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[orac2]

NASA takes every precaution that it can to prevent a mishap, but accidents happen.

I hope that is the case today, but I want to see independant evidence of it. NASA has lost the benefit of the doubt. The sad, terrible, fact is that the CAIB showed that even though sincere, brilliant, and dedicated NASA employees and contractors believed that they and NASA as a whole were taking "every precaution", they were not.

I know it is difficult for those in and close to NASA to accept and internalise this horrible conclusion, but internalize they must, or as the CAIB reprised the Roger's Commission, another investigation will be probing the deaths of more astronauts in a few years and coming to much the same conclusions.

Remember how so many in the shuttle program flatly refused to believe that foam could be the proximate cause of Columbia's demise? A lot of them maintained that belief right up until the moment the CAIB shot a hole in an RCC panel (in a test the Board had to directly administer itself after getting NASA to perform an "unnecessary" test became so much hassle). It's hard to admit you're wrong about something that cost the lives of friends and and co-workers, but it has to be done if more lives are not to be lost. Just as Gene Kranz stood up before his controllers after the Apollo 1 fire and declared "we are the cause," before leading them on the road to the Sea of Tranquility, everybody connected to today's NASA human spaceflight program must accept a similar burden.

If you haven't read the CAIB cover to cover, you must. You should also read this excellent article in The Atlantic Monthly on the disaster and investigation itself

If you have read the CAIB, how can you disgree with these findings?

a) That the loss of Columbia was not a unforseable "accident", but a preventable event that had many precursors.

b) NASA had a dysfunctional to non-existant safety culture that meant that many of the precautions that could have saved the lives of the crew simply didn't happen. One example: the ground camera network that documented launches was allowed to degrade.

c) That bureaucracy triumphed over engineering: requests for additional photography to assess the foam strike damage after the ground camera results were inconclusive were denied, for example.

d) Even the engineering had lapses: in particular the CAIB faulted NASA for an over-reliance on simulation over testing, and griped about "engineering by viewgraphs."

e) That hostility and derision greeted any external criticisms of the program or program safety. This insularity contributed to the collapse of the safety culture and so to the loss of the Columbia. It's for this reason that I will not accept on faith alone that NASA is taking "every precaution", because if it did Columbia would still be in one piece and it's crew alive.

Finally, let me say that I'm sorry for your loss and that nothing can detract from the fact that this was an incredible crew of brave and brilliant people.

Re:Lets keep this a secret

[orac2]

It's a miracle that we haven't had more accidents over the years.

Yes it is a miracle, not because of the inherent risks of spaceflight, but because of NASA's dysfunctional safety culture.

When NASA engineers had to prove that a situation was unsafe before cautionary action could be taken, instead of simply showing that no-one had proved the system to be safe, shuttle launches became a glorified form of Russian roulette. It was true when the Rogers commission investigated Challanger, and it was true when the CAIB investigated Columbia, even if those involved were decent, conscientious, people who honestly believed they were doing the right things for the safety of the crews.

so your saying

[geekoid]

that within a finite space, we have infinite crude oil?